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His garage is gone, but his house remains -- and to those who made that possible: Thank you.

Pioneer Press

Posted:
07/28/2014 12:01:00 AM CDT

Updated:
07/29/2014 09:12:13 AM CDT

A call to the Bulletin Board Hot Line, from Short, Fat and Bald in St. Paul: "My garage burned down today.

"I'm calling to thank St. Paul Fire for saving my home.

"In all the commotion, I forgot to thank the guys who came with their trucks and hoses. You do amazing work, and it's one of those you don't appreciate until you really need 'em. They're courageous men who thanklessly do their job every day, and my heart goes out to them.

"I'm eternally grateful for them."

Then & Now

Handwritten Recipes Division

The Blue Bubble's Friend: "Re: all the talk about women having their mother's recipes in those little boxes.

"Well, sorry to say, I am OTD and still have three boxes full of recipes.

What is right with people? (Going Postal Division) [responsorial])

Writes GRAMPA JIM of North St. Paul: "The people at the USPS are wonderful decoders. This arrived with no problem."

Don't know if anyone will be interested in them when I am hopefully in my heavenly abode. Hope I won't need them there. Probably I would not be able to tell anyone about a certain recipe because I haven't even looked at many of them for years. Well, it will be an adventure for anyone interested in them."

This 'n' that (responsorial)

Karen of Kindness: "My mother was one of those old-time cooks whose recipes were in her head and whose measurements were stated as a handful or pinch. She made the most tasty noodles. My sister decided to replicate them and called my mother for the recipe. One of the measurements called for half an eggshell of water. My sister attempted to make them, but the noodles were awful.

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Mavis, my sister, called back to my mother with the results. My mother's response was that Mavis had used the wrong half of the eggshell. Mavis never attempted to make noodles again, at least not using my mother's recipe.

'While reading the Bulletin Board [7/24/2014] and finding out that cattails are edible, quoting both the guide and Euell Gibbons, I was reminded of the time I saw Euell Gibbons at O'Hare airport at a hot dog stand, eating a hot dog. At the time, I thought that was a bit strange -- but in light of the comments about cattails, perhaps Euell decided that the hot dog looked enough like a cattail to qualify as 'health food.' "

BULLETIN BOARD SAYS: It certainly qualifies, in Chicago.

Everyone's a copy editor!

Jim from Horse Lake: "In the Wisconsin section of Wednesday's paper, the Pioneer Press reported that 'a trooper stopped the vehicle ... and spelled intoxicants on the driver.' Do they write it on the forehead, with Magic Marker?"

Where we live

"Landmarks" Division

Blondie of Blaine: "Last week, on Thursday, I was to meet a friend for lunch at Perkins in Monticello. I had never taken 94 to get there (I usually take Highway 10 and turn left at Big Lake), and I became a little confused as to what road to take to get to the downtown area.

"When I realized my mistake, I looked to the northwest and saw the American flag flying in the distance against a perfect blue sky. I started to head in that direction, then 'lost' the flag, so I asked a resident where Perkins is. She said: 'Stay on this road, and you will drive right to it.'

"When I got there, I realized the flag I had seen was the one in the cemetery, across the street from Perkins, which was flying even higher than the one at Perkins."

The permanent grandmotherly record

Tim Torkildson: "My grandmother lived in an upstairs attic apartment, right across from an old flour mill that clanked continuously day and night. That made conversation hard, because she was old and growing deaf and I was young and too impatient to ever say anything twice. And she never put any candy in her candy dish.

"But I liked going up the dim, steep stairs to her small room filled with chipped knickknacks, because her huggability was enormous; with her humped back, she was shaped somewhat like a crescent roll, so I could snuggle right into her, fitting in like a jigsaw-puzzle piece.

"She kept lavender sachets everywhere. One winter day, I found a soggy sachet in the bowl of tomato soup she made me. The soup didn't taste too bad; I knew better than to ask for another bowl. She would have given it to me, but then would go without her own bowl of soup sometime that week. Her apartment smelled like my Aunt Julia's bathroom, which was crammed with French milled soap.

"I asked her one day why she never put any candy in her candy dish.

"She gave me a gentle, crooked smile. Her dentures were mail-order and didn't fit very well; when she did smile, they tended to slip around in her mouth. They fell out at my brother Bill's wedding, right into the punch bowl, and sank like a stone. Bill fished them out with a set of ice tongs.

"She told me the candy dish was a very valuable piece of rich cut glass that she had gotten as a wedding present from her husband's people up in Montreal. They had not come to the wedding, she continued, but they did send the candy dish. She used to keep bonbons in it. I stopped her there, demanding to know what bonbons were. She looked out the window facing the clattering flour mill while she told me that once, long ago, people would work all day to hand-roll little balls of chocolate with delicious fillings inside, and that these were very expensive, but back then she kept her candy bowl full of them. Then her glasses stopped working, and she took them off and didn't talk anymore.

"But I knew what had happened; Mom had told me. Grandpa had run off with a Ziegfeld Follies showgirl to Toronto and never came back. I suddenly hated him very much, because he was keeping me from having any of those wonderful-sounding bonbons. My grandmother saw the fierce resentment in my face; she went to her kitchen cabinet and brought back a box of graham crackers. We ate them in companionable but sad silence together, washed down with tap water, and I forgave Grandpa for taking the bonbons away from me for his Ziegfeld girl -- whatever the heck THAT was."

Everyone's a critic!

Or: The pleasure of rereading

IGHGrampa: "I was at the used-book market in Bloomington, at I-494 and Lyndale. There I came across a bunch of James Herriot books. I selected the first of his books, 'All Creatures Great and Small,' and bought it. I read it years ago, and it seemed to be calling to me. Now, I've gotten engrossed in it once again.

"He has an easy, genial writing style. Even though it's full of British phraseology and terminology, I'm not having a bit of trouble keeping up. He seems to have a great talent for explaining things without interrupting the flow of the narration. He also seems to know when to let things be and have the reader figure it out for himself.

"I'm learning things that escaped me at the first reading. Some things mentioned in passing have led to my learning something new. A mention of Bruce Bairnsfather cartoons led to a search on the name. (I love some of those British names.) Bruce Bairnsfather was the British version of Bill Mauldin. He worked during the First and Second World Wars. His cartoons are very much like Mauldin's, showing the dirty, gritty realism of war, with the acerbic humor associated.

"I'll have to try to get back to that bookstore. Maybe I can pick up more of the Herriot books. Maybe I can even find a copy of Bill Mauldin's book 'Up Front.' "